In the lead-up to the June 7 opening of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, director Rem Koolhaas sounded like he was planning a family therapy session for the architectural profession: “This retrospective will generate a fresh understanding of the richness of architecture’s fundamental repertoire, apparently so exhausted today,” he remarked upon the January 2013 announcement that he would curate this year’s edition. Koolhaas cited “the process of the erasure of national characteristics in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language” as one source of architecture’s current predicament. Contemporary architecture, he noted, has become “flattened,” and though Koolhaas doesn’t necessarily see this as a negative quality, he requested that national pavilion curators redirect their attention away from contemporary architecture. Each participating country was asked to produce an exhibition on the influence of modernization in the 20th century on its architecture, as a means of inspiring reflection on the worldwide monotony of contemporary building. With the 2014 Biennale now underway, it’s clear that the combined efforts of the 66 exhibiting countries have produced more questions than answers.

Several patterns emerged this year. The archive, as a depository of the kind of historical research performed by this year’s curators, is invoked in various capacities. Many pavilions reference work from previous Biennales, like the American and Swiss displays, which attempt to enliven a site that is typically reserved for solitude and study. Other displays, notably the Koolhaas-curated Monditalia section in the Arsenale, employ dance, film, and photography — but not architecture — to represent the built environment. At times, these methods produced overwhelming exhibitions crammed with text and visual stimulation; at others, they struck a delicate balance between mediums and historic moments that allowed for a moment of pause required for insightful reflection. Below are some of our favorites.

French Pavilion — “Modernity, Promise or Menace?”

Curated by Jean-Louis Cohen (the mastermind of last summer’s blockbuster Corbusier retrospective at MoMA), the French pavilion takes a long glance at the country’s history of cast concrete residential architecture. Though the material and typology are more often associated with drab pre-fabricated blocks behind the Iron Curtain, the French pavilion offers a reminder that it was Corbusier and his ilk who popularized the material in geometric iterations around the globe. 

Even more explicit is the discussion of the concrete block’s dual connotations: both a symbol of progress and repression. The display devoted to a housing estate built in southern France during the 1930s, which was used as a concentration camp during the Holocaust, is especially telling: the same blocks now operate again as residences. Architecture repeats itself, but memory is wiped clean.

Russian Pavilion — “Fair Enough”

Envisioned as a trade fair devoted to the exchange of ideas, the Russian pavilion, curated by Moscow’s Strelka Institute, contains some 20 booths “selling” the ideas of Russian architectural history to a global clientele. Can architectural ideas developed in Russia over the past century be exported abroad as solutions to resolve contemporary architectural and spatial questions?  Like the Biennale, the pavilion doesn’t offer a conclusive answer.

What it does offer, however, is entertainment in spades. At one stall, an invented corporation called Estetika Ltd. sells vernacular ornamentation commonly found in Russian country houses and folk architecture as decorative elements fit for a skyscraper; at another booth, that same type of country house (the dacha) is displayed as a solution to the space crunch that befalls many urban denizens (it’s just that much cozier than a sterile storage unit, you know?). The greatest hits of Soviet design history — think El Lissitzky, VDNKh, and the Moscow metro — are presented in this absurdist, half-comical manner. But the underlying question might be a bit more sinister: what value does historic architecture have for the contemporary profession beyond novelty and nostalgia?

Polish Pavilion — “Impossible Objects”

Poland, along with Germany, is one of the few countries inside the Giardini to eschew the prevailing vogue for encyclopedic, data-driven (read: overwhelming) exhibitions. Instead, the pavilion is devoted to a single object — a full-scale replica of the canopy over the grave of Polish interwar military and political leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, designed by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz in 1937. Here, architectural construction is treated as a metaphor for the process of building a modern state: the contradictions of both modern architecture and the modern nation-state are expressed in the canopy, a reactionary object based on Classical orders that suggests the predicament of building a modern regime on values inherited from the past. Enlarged illustrations by Jakub Woynarowski that line the surrounding walls explain the canopy’s iconography and the symbolism of the detached architectural elements — columns dislocated from the entablature to emphasize the canopy’s individual elements — which represent the countries between which Poland is sandwiched, and from which Szyszko-Bohusz liberally borrowed in his design for the canopy. Isolated at the center of the pavilion, the canopy can only be understood in the midst of its real and imagined surroundings: explanatory renderings, Russia and Germany, and past and present.

Brooklyn-based abstract artist Kadar Brock approaches his paintings as objects themselves — sanding, abrading and puncturing them, extracting colorful remnants from old canvases as surface materials and activated media toward new works. His process of creation, deletion, recycling, and renewal achieves results that blur the line between painting and sculpture, waste and reward.

The Brock's work will be on view during Art Basel Week at VOLTA10 from June 16 to 21, 2014.

GalleryLOG has partnered with VOLTA, in association with Blouin ARTINFO, to produce a series of unique short videos highlighting a selection of emerging artists for the art fair's upcoming Basel edition.  

“It’s a dream sequence,” said Nancy Newberry of her evocative, Texas-centric photographic series, “Halfway to Midland,” which is on view through June 27 at the Centro de Arte in Alcobendas, Spain as part of this year’s PhotoEspaña festival. (A survey of Philip-Lorca DiCorcia’s work is up through July 5.) Newberry had previously explored her home state’s idiosyncrasies with a series, “Mum,” dedicated to a Lone Star homecoming tradition. (As Jezebel explains, it involves a variety of corsages, “many bigger than a dinner plate and covered in artificial flowers, ribbons, and even stuffed animals”). While that earlier series involved shooting teenagers’ portraits in their own homes — resulting in a mix of documentary and fiction, Newberry said — “Halfway to Midland” is set in a “fabricated combination of places,” with many of the scenes captured in either Dallas or Marfa, and with models who “play out characters” for the photographer. The resulting images have the eerily awkward ambience of “Dogtooth,” transposed on a very different cultural milieu.

The installation in Alcobendas breaks the photographs into punctuated phrases: Young girls engaged in cheerleading-style pyramid-building; a series of what appear to be training exercises; horses in myriad artificial forms (tiny figurine, full-size statue, kitschy mirror). “There’s a mythology about how you grow up, and these cliches of the West, from movies and magazines,” Newberry said, clearly reflecting and responding to some of those predetermined stereotypes in her work. Yet the photographer is also culling personal experience — she cited a fascination with uniforms, the result of an upbringing in a Roman Catholic family with plenty of military members, in a state fixated on athletics and pageantry. “This is all based on concepts that, growing up, were important to participate in — cheerleading, band, these types of activities, and how people find their own identity through these social affiliations,” she said. Like “Mum,” “Halfway to Midland” is a hybrid of the actual and the invented. “It’s a fantasy,” Newberry said, “based on memories and realities of location.”

— Jeff Koons Bares All in Vanity Fair: Lest you thought Jeff Koons’s days of being photographed in the nude were over, Vanity Fair has captured the artist lifting weights in the buff in an article titled “Jeff Koons is Back!” Koons’s new portrait is more tasteful than his “Made in Heaven” series, with shadows and overlaid text strategically covering his nether regions.“Koons, at 59, has already begun a strict exercise-and-diet regimen so that he will have a shot at working undiminished into his 80s, as Picasso did,” reads the profile. [Gallerist]

— Jane Chu is the New NEA Head: The Senate has confirmed Jane Chu as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Chu has served as president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri since 2006, overseeing the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. The White House will make an official appointment within the week, making Chu the NEA’s first chairman since Rocco Landesman’s departure in 2012. [Journal Advocate]

— Rosen Gets Rid of That Picasso: The New York Landmarks Conservancy and Aby Rosen have reached an agreement in their dispute over the relocation of the Four Seasons Picasso. The tapestry will be moved to the New York Historical Society, where it will hang on the institution’s second floor. “It will be great for us to show the piece as a work of art and as an artifact of a time and place,” said Louise Mirrer, president of the Historical Society. “New York is a tear-down, buildup city. We house the artifacts of whatever past has vanished.” [NYT]

— GSA’s Year-End Exhibition Pushes On: The Glasgow School of Art will push forward with its final-year degree show following the devastating fire that destroyed parts of the school’s world famous Mackintosh building. The exhibition will include digital prints by the 102 students whose work was lost to the fire. [Guardian]

— National Portrait Gallery Director to Step Down: Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, will step down early next year to pursue writing and other work. [Guardian]

— A Look at Luxury Brands in Museums: The Wall Street Journal spotlights the recent trend of luxury brands using museum exhibitions as marketing tools. [WSJ]

— The Joan Mitchell Foundation, an art philanthropy organization, is investing $20 million in New Orleans. [NOLA]

— While everyone in New York is obsessing over “A Subtlety,” Kara Walker curated a show at the ICA in Philly. [NYT]

— The National Gallery of Art in D.C. has added 16 new works to its collection, including James Nares’s mesmerizing video “Street.” [WP]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

Highlights From the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale

Francesco Vezzoli to Exhibit at Pitti Uomo

Nancy Newberry’s Dream of Texas

Larry Clark’s Bargain Bin To Hit London

Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Ross Simonini was telling me about a visit he’d taken to the podiatrist. He’d been engaged in a series of long walks — from Brooklyn up to the Cloisters, for instance — and was having some knee pain. The doctor lectured him on the importance of regular foot exercise. Simonini, being an artist with a characteristically restless curiosity, soon grew tired of the typically prescribed regimen — a lot of lifting-of-things-with-the-feet, basically — and began to wonder: What would it be like to pick up a brush with the toes, to make paintings or drawings with an appendage far more unwieldy than the hand? “Your big toe, you can control very well,” he explained. “With your pinky toe... whatever happens, happens.”

The resulting “Podiatric” works express a holistic body-consciousness that is an important facet of the artist’s practice. Simonini makes drawings and paintings that derive from psychological stress, dietary habits, and anatomical limits. In his two-person show with Matthew Samolewicz, at Blackston Gallery in New York through July 6, he’s showing a collection of assorted drawings — many of which express a clear affection for Carroll Dunham and Philip Guston — as well as two distinct sets of work made with the hands, not the feet: A series of jittery, very-mixed-media drawings on restaurant napkins, and three larger “Itinerant Canvases.” The former, dubbed “Anxiety Napkins,” are created during his day-to-day wanderings; the latter are produced on longer excursions, camping trips, and the like. They’re all the result of Simonini’s thinking about how to collapse various factors — his physical surroundings, what he’s eating and drinking, how he’s feeling — into a single, largely abstract object.

Both series are made outside of the studio: in the woods, on the beach, or while riding the subway. Simonini, who is also a musician and member of the band NewVillager, had found himself spending a great deal of time touring the country; this type of work grew out of a desire to be productive while on the road. For the “Anxiety Napkins,” Simonini first starts with the blank canvas of a restaurant napkin. “I was originally stealing them,” he admitted. “I liked the idea that you’re building anxiety into the actual material — there’s an anxiety of thievery — but recently I’ve started asking if I could take them.” He then totes the napkin around with him, gradually building up a field of marks. He takes the napkin to other restaurants with him, he said, and uses it to clean his face or wipe up spills. Stains accrue, and influence the outgrowth of later marks. There are four “Anxiety Napkins” at Blackston. Simonini made one of them, which hangs over the front desk, during the course of an eight-hour marathon conversation with Richard Tuttle. (Simonini is an editor at The Believer.) “We started at a restaurant, and I took the napkin from there,” Simonini recalled. “I was taking notes on it.” Tuttle didn’t have to inquire why his interviewer was simultaneously making an artwork while they talked: “I don’t know if he’s the kind of guy you’d have to explain that to,” Simonini said. “It all made sense to him.” Generally, the napkins don’t have such a striking genesis story — they’re the result of everyday wanderings, everyday anxieties. “I’ll fold them up into a size I can put on my knee, and mark on them in a way that sort of feels like a massage, making a movement that somehow both alleviates and addresses anxiety,” he said. (While the basic process has something in common with work like William Anastasti’s “Subway Drawings,” Simonini’s napkins have far more figurative substance, even if some of that is accidental or unintentional.) 

Simonini in his studio

The “Itinerant Canvases” on view at Blackston are far more primitive looking — a little bit Joe Bradley, a little bit cave-paintings-at-Lascaux. One was made during a three-week honeymoon camping trip up the west coast. A basic set of working parameters gives “a framework for abstraction,” which can often seem intimidatingly open-ended, he said. Simonini brings nothing but a furled piece of raw canvas — no brushes, pigments, or other equipment — and relies on his immediate location for both the media he’ll apply and the tools he’ll use to apply it. In the case of the honeymoon painting, that meant conjuring a green mass of color using coffee mixed with crushed pine needles, and adding further adornment with black smudges from burnt firewood. Another work, made in Florida, appears to be an orderly arrangement of small icons; it was made by smearing and pressing flowers and grasses directly onto the canvas. “Flowers are one of the most common subjects in all of art history. This is another way of approaching landscape, or flowers, or still life, but not optically,” he said. Instead of a representation of a flower, the painting of the thing is derived from the thing itself.

Recently, in the studio, Simonini has been utilizing methods that explore the potentials and limits of his body: hands, feet, and even his mouth, on occasion. He’ll stand at one point in front of a large canvas and apply pigments (and foodstuffs), exploiting the full range of motion of each limb. He’s quick to distance the exercise from the body prints of someone like Yves Klein or David Hammons, though, since the resulting image isn’t an expression of the body itself, per se, but rather a document of what that body can do. In all cases — the napkins, the canvases carried on camping trips, the multi-appendage mark-making — the specific subject of the work is less important than the questions and issues that arise through the process. “What happens when you’re left to your own devices, and all you can use are the materials from your surroundings?” he wondered. “What do you paint with your feet? What kind of things emerge?”

“You can’t go to Basel and not buy something,” said Larry Fields in these pages nearly a year ago. The Chicago collector’s matter-of- fact tone expressed the sense, common among initiates, that the granddaddy of all fairs, Art Basel, is the art-world calendar’s premier event. Much has changed in the fair landscape since its founding 44 years ago, but despite the increased competition—even from its own franchises in Miami Beach and Hong Kong—the original retains an almost magical pull on serious collectors and some 300 leading dealers, who reserve their best and brightest for unveiling in the halls of the Messe each June.

“It’s impossible to overstate the city itself, its collectors and museums, as one of the core elements for the fair’s appeal,” says director Marc Spiegler. “But reaching out to other cities has created a transcontinental effect—collectors developed in Miami and Hong Kong are now coming to Basel.” He tries not to let the fair’s success go to his head, though. “We’re very Swiss,” says the American-born director, who makes his home with his family in Zurich. “We do a lot of self criticism, and ask a lot of questions of the dealers, the collectors. You want to be confident about what you’ve done, but you want to run a little scared. We try to embrace what is most interesting in the exhibitive moment.” Those innovations include Unlimited, the fair’s program for large-scale work—which Spiegler says has “made collectors think about such work at home as well as in museums”—and this year’s 14 Rooms, a showcase for performance curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Not that he has a choice: “If you stand still, you fall behind,” Spiegler says. “The art world is just moving too fast.” The challenge, then, is to remain consistently better than the rest. As dealer Robert Mnuchin puts it, “The Art Basel fair is like flying first class.” Below, his colleagues offer their own inside impressions.

MARIA ARENA BELL, Collector, Los Angeles

Commerce: Although there are a lot of art fairs worthy of collector attention, Basel is for those doing serious business.


Contemplation: Because it doesn’t take place in a party capital, side trips to places like the Beyeler Foundation, which offered a Picasso exhibition assembled from private local collections last year, add another layer to the fair’s function.

Connections: A great moment for me was hosting a dinner with Eli Broad for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art to show the art world that MOCA would survive and thrive—and it has, thanks to supporters from around the world, many of whom came together in Basel.

Collecting: Once, my husband and I came late to the fair and spotted a great early Warhol in a booth. After a very long negotiation, it wound up in our collection. Being there early, during the frenetic first hours, isn’t always the only strategy. Sometimes things emerge later that may be something you’re looking for.

Complaint: The absolutely worst thing about Basel is the hotel situation. I once tried staying in Zurich, but after a few scary, rainy, late-night drives, I had to
give up that idea.

EVA PRESENHUBER, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

Global: With dealers from all over the world, Art Basel
is very international. You can really learn a lot about art from Asia, India, Russia, and the Eastern European countries, which were not well represented before they opened up politically and economically. But the editing is very well done, which also differentiates Basel from other fairs. Every dealer wants to be there—and it’s very hard to get in.


Exposure: At Basel you can sell more prestigious and valuable works by big names. For younger artists, like Oscar Tuazon and Valentin Carron, Basel is a chance to be seen on a very big scale with some very, very serious collectors.

Star Power: Every major collector, from François Pinault to Peter Brant to Bernard Arnault, is there, along with many interesting smaller collectors. New collectors from Asia, Russia, and the Middle East are increasing in attendance.


Museum Hop: Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Schaulager, Basel; and Kunsthalle Zurich.

JENS HOFFMANN, Deputy director of exhibitions and public programs, the Jewish Museum, New York

Calm: Art Basel never really stresses me out the same way Art Basel Miami Beach does. It is all a little calmer and quieter in Basel, which makes the experience of going there usually very pleasant.

Balm: Each time I go to the fair I have seen artworks that help me better understand the work of artists whom I did not know that well, triggering deeper engagements with their work.

KRISTINE BELL, Senior partner, David Zwirner Gallery, New York

Fair: What sets Basel apart from all the other fairs is the level of connoisseurship that takes place there and only there. Galleries strive to assemble the most exceptional examples by their artists to meet the expectations of the collectors who attend. The fair does not attract a lot of artists, which would change the atmosphere.

Focus: Other fairs have a myriad of events, parties, and off-site activities to entertain visitors. In Basel there are fewer distractions, so collectors can enjoy a productive few days educating themselves and making acquisitions.


Market: When the quality is exceptional, the prices follow. As a result, the sales in Basel consistently surpass those at other fairs. We are there to educate visitors about our own artists and program and to walk someone through the pricing of a certain artist’s work. It is through these conversations that a new, aspiring collector will build relationships with galleries. We love inquisitive and interested people.

JOEL WACHS, President, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York

Far and Away: The art calendar’s other events have only made Art Basel’s place stronger by contrast. Its draw is the art and the people who attend, and it’s still the best fair by far.

Newcomers: Novices shouldn’t try to affect the experience of seasoned visitors. Besides, the first time is always the best.

DOMINIQUE LEVY, Dominique Lévy Gallery, New York

Previous Standards: One could say the ghosts of Ernst Beyeler, Thomas Ammann, and Jan Krugier, along with many other great Swiss dealers and patrons, inhabit the corridors and push everyone to excel in their footsteps.

Proceed With Caution: Study the map; prepare an itinerary; look with your eyes, not your ears; try to breathe and fight the rush.

FLORENCE DERIEUX, Director, Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Champagne- Ardenne, France / Curator of Art Basel’s Parcours sector

Amplify: Basel provides an incredibly rich and dynamic context with its art scene, institutions, schools, and nonprofits, to which Art Basel offers an unequaled visibility and coherence.

Extend: The multiplication of satellite events organized during the fair points to its ever-growing importance.

Appreciate: Parcours was imagined five years ago by the directors of Art Basel to create stronger links between the fair, the city, its inhabitants, and its visitors. It engages with Basel’s past and present, weaving artistic interventions into the fabric of the city itself. No other fair in the world has created such a daring and generous response to the public’s ever-growing interest in site-specific and performative works.

LUCY MITCHELL-INNES, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Selectivity: Art Basel offers galleries that you don’t see elsewhere and curated presentations of museum quality.
Special Treatment: We save really special, rare works for our Basel clientele, and they are always grateful and thrilled to be the first to see the work, so I think it develops loyalty with our collector base.

Endurance: To get through it all, one must work out during the week, avoid late nights, and wear flat shoes. It’s more like prepping for a marathon than a wild social event.

MARC BLONDEAU, Blondeau & Cie, Geneva / Former chairman of Sotheby’s France

Top Drawer: The world has two main art fairs: Art Basel and TEFAF in Maastricht. I participate in only two fairs, including Basel and a small fair in Geneva. The vetting committee is constantly faced with a great challenge because there is very little room for newcomers each year.

Long Haul: The buyers in Basel are not speculative. The market is very good. I’ve never seen a market like this in 40 years. It is really financially vibrant, and new collectors keep coming. But I think we need to go back to art and not just play the finance side. The art world goes in cycles, and we are in a cycle where finance really influences the way people look at art.

Memories: It’s important to have a booth with some singularity that people remember. I had a booth 20 years ago and people still talk to me about it. I didn’t have the most important work, but the setup for a white Yves Klein was exactly right.

A version of this article appears in the June 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine. 

BARCELONA — Sónar 2014, Spain's annual electronic music mashup takes Barcelona by storm.  In the years since it kicked off in 1994, the International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art has earned a top-notch reputation as as one of the world's leading festivals with its pulse on the electronic music scene and the latest in multimedia creation.  Sónar's organizers pride themselves on sticking to the festival's founding values: the link between creativity and technology.

In its 21st year, Sónar is quite the cool international scene. BlouinARTINFO checked out cutting-edge performances by Massive Attack, Plastikman, Carsten Nicolai, Jessy Lanza, Ben Frost, Bernier + Messier, Röyksopp & Robyn, Tarek Atouli, Henry Saiz, and many more. Barcelona is the perfect setting for the festival.  It's a very sophisticated city that seems to "gets the global thing" with organizers very savvy about what's going on with electronic tech and dance music everywhere else. What one often hears and sees at Sónar is more soundscape than song, shaped more by laptops than guitars and drums.  But then the sublime voice of a Neneh Cherry, a copeland, or Massive Attack's Elizabeth Fraser brings humanity back to the software.

Music critics and regular festival goers tell BlouinARTINFO they get a sense that a new generation is emerging at Sónar. It goes something like this: children raised on their parents' punk records, Hip Hop, video games and Kubrick movies; who went to college to absorb Cage, Warhol, Derrida and film theory; who entered adult life with the magically transforming personal tech that led to social media, omnipotent music software, climate change, rampant globalization, the CGI of Pixar and Matrix … became visually and aurally polymorphous, politically and culturally jaded,  but throughly liberalized by the Obama-era changes in gay rights and universal health care.

As many as 80-thousand of festival goers, primarily from all across Europe, descend on Barcelona for the three-day festival featuring a range of genres at venues all over town.  Many sport what appears to be the un-official uniform of oversized sunglasses and trendy flip flops. Sónar makes for great people-watching with a rainbow mix of universals (tattoos, jeans, t-shirt graphics, radical hair) with a European accent.  The city's welcoming, amiable character makes it a particularly mellow festival; lines into shows are long, but jolly.  It's the music that's serious, not the crowd.

— Ultra Violet Dies at 78: Isabelle Collin Dufresne, who went by the name Ultra Violet, died over the weekend at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Hospital after a fight with cancer. She was 78. Best known for starring in Andy Warhol’s films and for being a member of his famed Factory, the French-born artist, actress, and author was active until shortly before her death. A recent solo exhibition of her paintings, sculptures, prints, films, and neon works, titled “Ultra Violet – The Studio Recreated,” closed at New York’s Dillon Gallery three weeks ago.  [NYT, Gallery Press Release]

—Guggenheim Helsinki Sparks Finnish Ire: Many Finnish artists and art professionals are speaking out against the Guggenheim’s plans to build a museum in Helsinki. The primary issue is the use of taxpayer money to fund the project. “Not only would we use public money at a time of economic hardship and cuts in arts spending to finance the Americans, but we would then have to pay the Guggenheim a substantial annual sum each year to lease their ‘brand,’” said Tiina Erkintalo, executive director of Checkpoint Helsinki, a new commissioning body for contemporary art. [Telegraph]

— Auction Houses Battle Over Handbags: Heritage Auctions has filed a lawsuit against Christie’s International after the recent departure of their handbag specialist, Matthew Rubinger, to its competitor. Heritage claims that Rubinger “breached his contract and stole trade secrets.” A spokeswoman for Christie’s stated, “We have reviewed the complaint and find it to be wholly without merit. We are prepared to vigorously defend these claims and Christie’s decision to expand our existing handbag department.” [NYT]

— More Turmoil at MOCA NOMI: The city-nominated director that the MOCA NOMI board rejected held a symposium at the museum, despite protestations from the institution. [NYT]

— P.Diddy Takes in St. Louis: While in St. Louis, P.Diddy took some time to check out the local art scene. [Riverfront Times]

— Koons Installation Challenges Whitney: “It’s the perfect storm of difficulties. There are the sheer physical demands of the objects themselves, their high values and the fragile materials, to say nothing of the cliffhanger of waiting for works that have been in production for years.” — Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s associate director of programs, on the museum’s upcoming Jeff Koons retrospective. [NYT]

— Scott Reyburn explores the trend of “the art gallery as destination.” [NYT]

— A new generation of Brazilian architects is part of an architectural renaissance taking place in the country amid the boom of stadium building leading up to the World Cup. [LAT]

— Independent art dealer Alex Rosenberg was questioned in the ongoing trial of three trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust against the artist’s foundation. [News-Press]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

In the Know: Insiders Talk Art Basel

25 Questions For Experimental Theater Director Robert Wilson

Highlights From the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale

Ross Simonini’s Feet, Food, and Fraught Emotions

VIDEO: Kadar Brock Paintings Are Full of Holes

Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Cristina de Miguel may have trained at a classically inclined art academy in Seville, Spain, but you’d be hard pressed to recognize that given the exuberant, large-scale paintings in “Absolutely Yours,” the artist’s debut solo show with Freight + Volume in New York. Indeed, the only vestige of her conservative schooling is a simple portrait of a young gentleman collaged onto “Lovestory,” a multifaceted painting depicting an imaginary studio wall hung with various sketches and studies. (There’s also an image of a devil-face De Miguel spotted graffitied onto a wall, and a rudimentary nature scene that she says was inspired by a residency at Skowhegan, in Maine.) The other paintings in the show are scenes that respond either to moments the artist has witnessed in New York, or to the act of painting itself. Abstract passages share space with weird slices of figuration, as in “La Noche,” which pairs a background pattern inspired by Andalusian tiles with a spraypainted image of a very unique French kiss. For “Candy Saga in the Subway,” De Miguel incorporated blobby forms derived from the popular smartphone game Candy Crush; another painting borrows its basic motif from a baccarat board.

While her studies at the University of Seville were fairly stultifying — “drawing from nude models for five years, the same thing,” she said — a year abroad in Athens expanded her horizons. There was more freedom in the studio there, and a well-stocked library that introduced her to painters — Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente — who had never been discussed in her classes in Spain. De Miguel left Spain in 2011 to earn an MFA at Pratt University in Brooklyn, and has been living and working in the city ever since — nearly all of the canvases in “Absolutely Yours” were completed since last fall. They bear the influence of her daily surroundings, as well as an ongoing exploration of painters who weren’t afraid to experiment with styles that border on the impolite and ragtag. “Two Bitches or Mother and Daughter” looks a bit like a DIY beauty-shop sign that one might find hanging in certain corners of Brooklyn, although in this case it seems to be advertising the familial joys of cigarette smoking. De Miguel completed it immediately after touring MoMA’s Sigmar Polke exhibition, keyed in to the early, commercially-inflected paintings of socks and sausages.

In the back of Freight + Volume there is a scrappy, multi-layered painting titled “Self-Portrait Wearing Jeans.” It depicts a flattened, two-dimensional vision of the artist wearing a cliched “I Love New York” tourist T-shirt; an actual paintbrush is glued into her hand and a thick red arrow shoots straight into her brain. She looks equal parts ecstatic and anxious; her arms hang nearly down to her kneecaps. It’s a rough and raw work, and given her background, it reads as a literal destruction of the formal training De Miguel cut her teeth on. It’s a portrait of the artist striving to clear a path for herself, even if things get a little messy.   

— Ryan Seacrest Joins LACMA Board: “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest has been named as a new trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, along with Ann Ziff, Nicole Avant, and Anne Emerich Palmer. According to LACMA, Seacrest collects postwar and contemporary art. [LAT]

— Hidden Picasso Painting Uncovered: Scientists using infrared imaging technology have revealed a hidden painting of a bow tie-clad man underneath Pablo Picasso’s early 1901 masterpiece “The Blue Room.” Official findings were revealed last week, but curators and conservators from the Phillips Collection, National Gallery of Art, Cornell University, and Delaware’s Winterthur Museum have been working for five years to unravel the mystery. Patricia Favero, the Phillips Collection conservator responsible for the best image of the hidden painting to date, said, “It’s really one of those moments that really makes what you do special.” She added, “The second reaction was, well, who is it? We’re still working on answering that question.” [Guardian]

— Bob & Roberta Smith Bring Art Party to Basel: The British artist known as Bob & Roberta Smith is staging an art party event in Basel to bring attention to art funding cuts in the UK. At the Volkshaus, the artist plans to hold informal discussions, “happenings,” and performances. “I’m as suspicious of the Labour Party as I am of the Conservative Party on some levels,” he said. “[But] I do think people ought to engage in politics.” [TAN]

— Israel and Germany Team Up to Find Nazi Loot: Art experts at museums in Israel and Germany will coordinate the formation of a joint database on art looted by the Nazis, following an agreement signed Sunday by both nations’ culture ministers. [Art Daily]

— Frida Kahlo’s First NY Solo Show in 25 Years: The New York Botanical Garden’s 2015 exhibition will focus on Frida Kahlo’s engagement with the natural environment of Mexico. It will be the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in New York City in more than 25 years. [Press Release]

— Here’s Francis Bacon in Drag: An article in the Guardian revealed that a photograph by photographer John Deakin listed as “Unknown Woman, 1930s” was actually famous painter Francis Bacon in drag. [Guardian]

— “We’re really taking the dust off the place and making it an exciting destination for people.” Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum director Caroline Baumann gives the Times a sneak peak at the institution’s renovations. [NYT]

— A non-profit group in St. Petersburg, Florida is applying to build an arts and crafts museum in the city. [St. Petersburg Tribune]

— The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth has received a $10 million gift to build a museum learning center. [Artforum]

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The Guggenheim’s “Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today,” presented by the UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, is a sweeping survey of 37 contemporary artists and collaborators from 15 Latin American countries — but the strength of the individual works is diminished by the framework of the exhibition’s regional focus.

Featuring nearly 50 art works that range from installation to painting and sculpture to performance, “Under the Same Sun” — which will travel on to Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo and Museo Jumex in Mexico City — explores a variety of social and theoretical topics, including the erasure of indigenous history and culture, oppressive regimes, social inequality, multisensory perception, and the social construction of time, with mediums like video and performance dominating the field.

Curator Pablo León de la Barra has placed emphasis on participatory art works in the exhibition. At the press preview, museum director Richard Armstrong said, “We’re not looking at something, we’re engaging with something,” and that sentiment is indeed reflected in many of the show’s highlights. Carlos Amorales’s suspended mobile of Zildjian cymbals that viewers are encouraged to play breaks the silence of the gallery space with a cacophony of reverberating clashes. Gabriel Sierra has built an armature of unfinished plywood into the passageway between galleries for visitors to walk through, calling attention to the unseen supports beneath the museum’s walls and offering visitors a choice of how to move through the space. And Jonathas de Andrade’s “Posters for the Museum of the Northeastern Man” is a project in the style of an anthropological study, in which visitors are encouraged to rearrange poster portraits produced by the artist, picking and choosing which images best represent the look of an average man from the Northeastern region of Brazil.

De la Barra creates a laboratory-like environment in the museum’s second and fourth floor annex galleries. The flow of the exhibition allows visitors to weave in and out of installations, like Luis Camnitzer’s “Art History Lesson no. 6,” a series of slide projects set up on the floor. Overall, the show feels more like a playground than a traditional gallery exhibition — a welcome contrast to the “Futurism” show just around the corner in the museum’s rotunda.

The exhibition’s ultimate flaw, however, is its geographic bundling of artists, a number of whom explore formalist ideas and not the social politics of the region. And the presence of significant historical works — like Juan Downey’s “The Circle of Fires” (1979) and Alfredo Jarr’s seminal “A Logo for America” (1987) — amid a majority of pieces produced after 2000 muddies the exhibition’s angle on the contemporary scene. Meanwhile, tricky loose ends, like the addition of American-born conceptual artist Paul Ramirez Jonas, get in the way. “Under the Same Sun” features some strong individual works — and the exhibition rightfully spotlights artists who are lesser known in the United States — but it suffers from the same broad and vague categorization that its predecessor, “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia,” did, by lumping together works that are conceptually wide-ranging, created by artists’ whose experiences, geography, and identity can’t be easily mapped.